Several years ago, when I was a pastor in Kansas, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to have mandated prayers at the baccalaureate services in public schools.
As far as I know, every school board in the state immediately ruled that there would no longer be any prayers at baccalaureate services, and most of them decided that they would no longer have such services under the auspices of the public school systems.
Instead they decided to turn the service over to the local ministerial alliance with the understanding that it would be held someplace other than on school property.
They also mandated that no student would be required to attend the proposed services. As a result, many of the communities lost the value of the historical baccalaureate service.
I was a "voice crying foul in the wilderness" and was completely ignored. I said that the Supreme Court did not rule against prayers during baccalaureate services, but rather ruled that you could not "force" or "compel" students or anyone else to participate in a baccalaureate prayer.
An example of this violation would be for the one giving the prayer to request that everyone stand and join him or her in prayer.
In such instances, peer pressure often dictated that everyone stand and join in prayer even if someone did not want to. But, as I said, no one listened to me.
Within a few short months, the Supreme Court also ruled that student prayers at athletic events, such as football games, are constitutional.
Wow! I was vindicated. The people at an athletic event were not being forced to "join in a prayer," and the prayers were coming from the classmates of those participating in the athletic event.
However, again no one paid much attention, and the baccalaureate service largely disappeared in Kansas.
It was replaced by a religious service that was not well attended and was all too often a "bully pulpit" for enterprising pastors wishing to get their particular theology across to the public.
The people of our country are an extremely diverse people.
They differ in biological, psychological, spiritual, sociocultural, institutional and worldview perspectives. And yet, they are all human and deserve to be treated with respect and integrity as they integrate into society.
As has often been said in the past, America is really a very large "melting pot" of people from all over the world.
Most Christians tend to focus upon the religious differences among people, but few are well educated in the histories or religious beliefs of spiritually different people.
Yes, one of the great tensions between religious groups is the role of Jesus both historically and eschatologically -- looking toward the future -- but that does not exclude others from their particular beliefs.
For instance, I have noticed that there is a new Hindu place of worship that has been built just east of Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to have the Hindu religion and culture presented by a couple of Hindu believers, and I asked about this new place of worship.
At that point, I was informed that there were two places of Hindu worship in northwest Arkansas, and that they were as different as day and night.
I am sure that most people living here did not know that. Do we also know anything about Islam and Judaism? There are many different expressions of both Judaism and Islam, and they are radically different.
What about the Buddhist community? The University of Arkansas has a very strong Buddhist program, but most of us know very little about what is being taught.
The same diversity exists among Christian groups. Otherwise, there would only be one church denomination.
Diversity is very common in America, but people who are different than we are not prime suspects for evangelism and proselytizing.
They deserve more than that. And, as I said before, the U.S. Constitution does not mandate that people cannot pray; it simply says that no one is allowed to force their religion or prayers upon someone else.
We do not like it when someone attempts to do it to us, and neither should we like it when people do it to one another.
After all, the Golden Rule says, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Good advice. I'm glad it's in the Bible.
* * *
Box is the chaplain for the Bella Vista Police and Fire departments. The opinions expressed in this column don't necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.
Editorial on 09/17/2014